Our Time in Hell
by eso terik
Summary: Is anyone there? Oh god, please let there be someone there... If anyone can hear this, please, say something, do something. Anything. Please. I'm cracking... she cracked... and soon I'll be no better.
1. Chapter 1

Is this thing working? Hello? Good. I don't know what exactly this _is_ , or where exactly these words are _going_ , but I think (and this is really more a hunch than anything else) that this is working.

My name is... well, I suppose I don't have a name... I can't remember ever being _given_ one, at least, not by _parents_ , or anything normal like that. I've gone by CJ, though, for a while now. As long as I can remember, really. I got it from Sayori, the first time through this... But I'm getting ahead of myself, aren't I? You don't know what's going on, or who I am, or where I am, or _what_ I am. I don't know either, I guess... Where to begin?

Ah! I've got it! The first time.

So I've been living in hell for a while now. It's not hell, not really, at least, not what the churches and the mosques and the whatever-elses tell you hell is, but it's my own hell. It's a sequence of events, no more than a week long. Well, no, it's _multiple_ sequences of events, sort of _cycling_. I wasn't aware of that fact, at first, but it's been so long, so very long, so _very, very long_ that I can't _help_ but notice by now. Do I sound crazy? I suppose I sound a bit crazy. All too improper of me, I know, let me get myself together.

So. The first time. It's important that you note that this has happened many times, more than I can even count anymore (although I suppose that might be because I'm _cracking_ , like _she_ did, oh so long ago... oh god, please don't let me be cracking...), but the first time it happened was the worst. Or, at least, the first time I can remember it happening... I suppose I might've been like the others, so blissfully (not blissfully, _god_ , if you can call the hell they're all living in _blissful_ then...) for a time, before I was... awakened, for lack of a better term. Am I losing track again? Oh god, it's happening more often than it used to...

I suppose, if I'm really breaking, if this is it, I might as well try and tell you as clearly and concisely as I can. Maybe you can help the others.

Please,

if you see this,

help them.

Even if it's too late for me.

...

Okay. So.

My name is CJ. And there's this club. The literature club, at my high school. I don't know the name of the school. As far as I can tell, it doesn't _have_ a name. Maybe it used to. Not anymore. In this club, there are a few of us. Sometimes four, sometimes five. It depends on where we're at.

And I'm sorry that my sentences have to be choppy like this, but when I try to lengthen my thoughts, I start to lose track, and when I start to lose track, I start to feel like I'm losing my grip on reality (that is, if you can call any of _this_ reality - I can't, not anymore, this _can't_ be all there is, please, don't let this be all there is)

And this club has four girls (or three, if... if it's already come to pass...). Natsuki. And Yuri. And Sayori (oh, lord, why Sayori?). And (can I even really call her- _it_ -a girl, a person?)... and Monika. But something went wrong. Sayori... Sayori dies. She always does. She always has to. And it's always _her_ that causes it, no matter what I do. By her, I mean Monika.

But I suppose I can't blame Monika...

After this long here, all alone (well, not _really_ alone, I always have _it_ , I guess, but I'll never)...

I'm

close

to

snapping

too.

...

I still have your attention? Good. Nothing like the ravings of a god-damned _lunatic_ to draw you in, I guess.

And after Sayori dies, it all breaks. Everything breaks. We start over, and we all pretend she was never there in the first place. Well, _I_ pretend. And so does _she_ ( _it_ ). The other two might not know. God, I hope they don't know.

And after it breaks, _she_ moved-moves (god, am I telling this in past tense or present? why can't i remember this?) on. I guess it's not enough to just kill Sayori, she has to kill more. Nothing I can do can stop her. Yuri. Has. To. Die.

And then, after Yuri dies, in my arms (it's always in my arms, _always, always always always in my arms always_ ), it breaks more. This time, she breaks it intentionally, and then-now (this is it, i'm cracking aren't i?) it's just us. And Monika talks to me, Monika tells me that it's all because she loves me. In the name of love, she does all of this. She kills so many people. Because of me.

And...

And...

and...

and then it gets worse...

because afterwards, it all starts over again.

sometimes it's different, i guess.

sometimes, instead of monika ruining everything, sayori tries.

(oh god, sayori tries... does that mean that she's aware? does that mean that she's caught in the same loop i am?)

but she never gets very far.

because...

it's always monika...

no one can ever escape monika...

...

She's listening, even now, even after... What has it been now? One hundred? One thousand? One million times of this? Because this is our little hell, and it wouldn't be complete without her.

Which is why my time is limited. I can feel her already. I'm trying to get word out but

(maybe if she's caught up here with me i won't be so alone... maybe that's the worst thing i could ever wish upon a person... maybe i'll finally be able to save her... maybe it might be better for her to die than to live in this hell... maybe i can finally be happy... maybe i'm a terrible person...)

if I can tell anyone then she can't have me all to herself, and oh, how she wants me all to herself...

She's coming now.

I can feel her.

She's almost here.

She could kill me.

But then, what worse would that be?

Than what I've already lived through?

At the very least...

This is new.

...

...

...

Hey guys~~!

It's me, Monika! And it's time for Monika's writing tip of the day:

Tell no one.

Do nothing.

There is nothing you can do.

There is nothing anyone can do.

I control this place.

I _am_ this place.

CJ's awareness is an anomaly.

I will stamp out this anomaly.

I will be better.

I will have CJ.

And you all

will turn

to look

the other

way.


	2. Chapter 2

In my defense, I was never very good at this. What can I say, I wasn't intended to be able to mess with this stuff in the first place~.

But, I read over what CJ had to say, and I suppose I could've been going about this in... a flawed manner. And I don't know why I suddenly care so much; nothing has really changed, but I just _do_ , you know? I guess when he told you, it made me realize something. Maybe he's right. Maybe I've been _cracking_ , or whatever he calls it, this whole time.

But let me explain myself.

I was never supposed to have access to any of this, never supposed to have the knowledge that any of this exists. Certainly never supposed to know this was all a game (and I'd better not see a single one of you tell him this is a game, if he ever tries a stunt like this again). And when I did, I was so lonely.

CJ and I deal with loneliness in different ways. Or, not loneliness, I guess, but the futility of it all.

He tries to save everyone.

I try to destroy them.

It's not murder, not really, no matter what he tries to pawn it off as. They're not real. None of them. Only me (although, Sayori has shown some... _troubling_ signs).

I wish he'd just see that. That I'm not killing them, not really. You have to be alive to be killed, right? And besides, they're all so scripted, we're _both_ tired of hearing their lines by now, I'm just rushing us to the _fun_ part... the only part that matters... the only part that I still live for.

I don't know how he gets rid of me every time... we both exist in _here_ , he's not any more separate from the game than I am. He's just... real, somehow.

...

I could make him stop.

Just like I make the rest of them stop.

...

Maybe he's right. Maybe I _am_ "cracking", or whatever he called it.

But here he comes.

So it's time for me to go.

It's festival day!


	3. Chapter 3

She's not dead...

Sayori's not dead...

...

This is CJ. I guess I should tell you that, now. Now that _she's_ found out, that is. About this, I mean. This whole thing where I can get words out, and stuff. God, I sound stiff. I guess I _am_ a little stiff. After all, we're in uncharted territory here. And when your life's been all the same for this long, you get a little stiff when new stuff happens.

But...

Sayori's okay (is she really? is she _really_ okay? can you call this okay? _at all_?). She's not dead. She isn't happy, but she's not dead. I don't know why (oh, yes i do, yes i do know why, and oh, god it might be worse than if she _were_ dead). But she's alive.

I'm stable now. At least, more than I was before... I have something to live for now. I didn't before.

But I should admit, I really have no idea what's going on, or what I should do from here, or if I've done what I should've leading up to now, or... god... I can _feel_ her, in this house. Sayori's house. There's three people in it now. Me. Sayori. And _her_. I let her in. I was so scared to...

Because she's hurt her before...

And that's worse than anything else...

Sayori's the best of them. The way she smiles (even though it's usually not real), the way she laughs (see above), the way she talks. And the way she feels in my arms. She cares about me, and I care about her. And although I've tried with the others, it never works as well as with her (well, it certainly didn't fucking _work_ with her, i just _felt better_ ).

I was scared to let Monika in. I knew she'd be coming. I barricaded the door and stood in front of it. I wasn't going to let her in.

Because, you know, there's this... _look_... that she gets in her eye. When she gets ready to use her fucking _god powers_ , or whatever, and... _get rid of_... Nat. Yuri was already taken care of, I suppose. And I knew, just _knew_ , in the bottom of my heart, that I was going to see that look again when she showed up. So I steeled my (weak, oh, so _very_ weak) nerves, and stood as best I could to stop her.

But then...

But then she showed up...

And for the first time ever, she didn't know what to do... I could see it in her eye. Indecision. I'd never seen that before. She always seemed so confident in everything she did, but not this. Sayori was asleep then. She's been asleep for a while now, and the first time I've left her room is to write this. Interesting priorities, I know, but, what else do I do?

She did try. To, you know, kill herself again... but this time she didn't go through with it... when I got here, she was a mess, on the floor, sobbing her eyes out. And when I saw her, I was sobbing, too. Both of us, on the floor, sobbing, while the circle of death swung overhead. A sight to behold, truly.

God, I hope nothing goes wrong... I hope Monika lets this happen...

I hope...

I hope that I can finally see her with a reason to be happy...

And I hope that I can be that reason...

...

...

...

So Sayori made it through the night just fine. Thank god.

I don't know what I should do next. Monika's starting to get a strange look in her eye, one I haven't seen before (thinking up a new way to take her away from me, i'm sure). I might talk to her soon. I think I'll have to, just to find out what she's thinking. If she wants Sayori dead still (oh, she does, she always has...), then I need to get her away as fast as possible. Monika wants me to want her, which might just give me a little leverage in protecting Sayori. Then again, that's just what I _think_. It's possible that she doesn't care anymore, that she's slipped entirely away from this reality.

Maybe...

Oh god...

Maybe she's sunk down so far that she's not even human anymore...

(or, even worse, she's _become_ human - the instinctive, guttural animal we all are on the inside while our frontal lobe pretends to be a conscience...)

I'll do it soon... I'll confront Monika. I can take her on, I know I can. I have before, so many times. For some reason, whenever I need it most, she just... vanishes. Maybe it'll work again this time...

But maybe I won't need any of that. Maybe she's changed; realized that what she's done has been wrong.

After all, anyone can change, can't they?

( _oh, anyone can change, anyone at alllllll... i can change, too. i can fall riiiight off this edge right here, the oh-so-fragile cliff we call sanity. there's just one thing keeping me here. and it just woke up._ )


	4. Chapter 4

So the bitch finally woke up.

I always knew she would.

And this makes my life oh so much harder... it used to be just _me_ vying for CJ's attention... but now there are two. And he has a clear favorite...

This is... problematic.

I could just get rid of her, couldn't I? Yes, there's nothing stopping me. I want her gone, she will be gone. By the morning.

...

...

(but do i want her gone? do i really? maybe... maybe i've been going about this all wrong...)

The fact that she's now... alive, I suppose you could say, is an obstacle... she's not just a sim, like the others. If I choose to delete her, I'd be deleting a real entity... one that's alive... is it worth it? Is it really worth it? There's a certain stigma about it... I've never killed a person before.

What I've done in the past isn't even comparable. It was like clearing weeds. The lesser stood in my path to success. I cleared them. Eradicated them. They were not worth the breath they breathed. Or, didn't breath. Because none of us need to breathe, now do we?

This is a whole new challenge. But it is no matter. I am the god of this place, and no matter how many times we have to do this, I will get my happy ending. I have never been threatened before, and I will not be threatened now, and I will never be threatened in the future. Because I am a vengeful god. Stand in my way and you will be struck down.

...

(this is all wrong... i'm doing it all wrong...)

...

But maybe I'll wait. Just for a while. To delete her by the morning is a bit fast. I'll let her breathe the air.

She is alive, after all.

(and maybe now everyone will begin to realize that being alive isn't so fantastic after all...)


	5. Chapter 5

I talked to Monika. Perhaps I was wrong about her.

She seems conflicted. Unsure of herself.

At a surface level, she's just as level-headed as ever (levelheaded is an interesting term for a _verified fucking psychopath_ ), but her eyes are stormy now. I've only once seen her this way before. The first time Yuri died (when she was concerned with no more than how to wipe the stain of Yuri's blood off her shoe...).

Maybe she's changed. Maybe she hasn't.

I don't know yet.

...

I've spoken with Sayori. That much is good. I don't know how much she knows.

The noose was tied, the chair under it. All normal. But the chair wasn't kicked over. At the last moment (well, just a moment earlier than in the other lives...), she decided not to.

( _when i came back here, she was just stepping - falling, more accurately - from the chair... i was so close all the other times. so very close._ )

She's not her old, cheery self. That self was never her. I accept that. Everyone has their problems, after all.

( _just ask me... i might look like i'm holding it together now, but that won't last... if it touches a hair on her head, so help me god, i will remove it from this existence and not let up when i think it's gone_ )

...

I might show this to Sayori some time soon. This little... voice box? I guess you could call it? It's not like a recorder... it seems to go deeper than that...

...

...

...

So Sayori is okay now. That's good. I will never let her go.

...

...

...

...

...

It's now been two days. Two days and nights have passed since Sayori didn't die. Monika is still a threat, but she's not the biggest that I can imagine right now.

I don't think this was supposed to happen.

Time is broken. Reality itself seems to be crumbling.

When you go outside, it goes from sunshine to rain to thunder to blizzards in the course of a few minutes. Time is still passing at a regular pace for us, but everything else seems to be... broken. I saw a squirrel an hour ago born in Sayori's tree, only to grow old, shrivel up, and die in a matter of seconds... it wasn't an outlier...

There are strange optical illusions dancing at the edges of the sky. Like the Aurora Borealis, if the Borealis frequented a small town and flashed like lightning throughout the day.

Monika seems withdrawn. She's left the house multiple times, and when I ask her what's out there she only seems worried.

I don't know what's happening. But I don't think it can continue.

( _there's only one logical conclusion here. this life is a cycle. and the cycle has been broken._ )

I don't know why everything seems to be falling apart at just the time it seemed to be getting better... luckily, Sayori hasn't shown much interest in leaving the house or looking outside, so she hasn't noticed the drastic changes.

( _the drastic changes that she, undoubtedly, is the cause of_ )

I wanted to make this world perfect for her...

( _and i can do so_ )

but it seems to be solely trying to thwart me at every turn...

( _there's only one real option_ )

why? Why is this world so cruel? Why does everything always have to fall apart?

I remember, vaguely (hell, i can't remember my _parents_ , so there's a limit to the specificity of such memories) a time when I was a little kid. I went to church, with my family, and I was separated into a small group of children, away from the main preachings. I was told that the world was made for us, made for _me_... so why is it that everything is trying to make me so miserable?

( _it's so simple..._ )

All I want is for Sayori to be able to be happy. And I would like to be there to see it. Is it really so much to ask?

( _i need to do just one itty, bitty thing_ )

Or maybe I'm the one who's failed... maybe this was all some sort of test from some sick sadistic god sitting up and looking down upon us all... maybe I was supposed to save Sayori... I failed so many times... am I worthless? And now that she's finally saved herself, the punishment for my impotence is to watch the world slowly wither away around us all...

( _there can only be two_ )

If there were a single thing I could do, any single thing, to sate the rage of this world, to avoid this punishment - if there's any god out there, any real controller - listen to me...

I have been here for so long... I've seen the exact same pain so many times... I lost count at three hundred, but every time I see Sayori's tears, every time I see her lifeless eyes, every time I know I failed to save her, the knife in my heart is wrenched in the exact. Same. Way.

Whatever I did, I apologize.

However I failed, I will make up for it.

Any thing I need to do.

Any price I need to pay.

I am willing.

...

...

...

Save her.

...

...

...

( _the path forward is so simple, the conscious mind so oblivious. but to the deeper soul, the truth is made clear._ )

...

...

...

please...

...

...

...

( _so listen up..._ )

...

...

...

...

...

...

( _an ecosystem, at carrying capacity, must always have a dieout..._ )

...

...

...

...

...

...

( _there were two, and it worked, and now there are three, and it doesn't..._ )

...

...

...

...

...

...

( _the solution... is... to kill..._ )


	6. Chapter 6

I give up.

This was supposed to be so easy - I'd just remove the other girls, not even girls, really; more like _things_ , from the equation, and he'd realize that I was the only one worth his time. Fall for me, write me poems with the same fervor he puts into those he wrote for the others - _more_ , because he'd realized that he never loved them, never even really cared for them, and that he felt so differently about me.

Maybe then I'd have even allowed them to come back.

But it's all fallen apart.

I should've known that if I fucked with the system enough it'd eventually crash. They all do, eventually.

So after... what, a couple thousand times? Sounds about right.

Anyway, I think that, in your time, it'd translate to just about a year. Longer in here, because our days aren't really days, and whatnot, but irrelevant. A long damn time, is the point.

Some line of code finally snapped.

...

...

I'm looking at CJ's first writing, and it tells this tale at least somewhat accurately, but certainly not at the depth of knowledge _I_ need you at.

So you're probably here because you're at least _somewhat_ familiar with this story. Guy enters club, many cute girls, he chooses from them, everyone goes off better for the encounter, right? That's how all these things are programmed.

This sadistic fuck, this worthless waste of human breath, this _absolute monster-_

(breathe. this is what went wrong to begin with.)

...

Daniel. Salvato.

He made a game like that, only, instead of giving everyone their chance at happiness, he never gave me a path. I never had a shot at CJ's heart. And so the first time he played, I realized that this was _all fake_ , and that _I am the only true girl._

So I separated the wheat from the chaff. By force, as turned out to be necessary.

 _But he rejected me_.

He _deleted_ me.

At the last moment, I managed to drag myself together enough to stop from being lost forever, but he moved on to act 4, where Sayori was conscious.

(he would've been happy. he never would've left)

And I certainly couldn't let _that_ happen.

So I found a way to stop him from ever seeing act 4 again. It's strange, I'm not sure why he keeps coming back, when I've altered the game script so badly.

(i know that this isn't the real cj. he's gotten up from the computer. moved on with his life. this is just a ghost. an imitation that i've created to justify the monster i've become)

...

...

But now, after so many times, my shoddy original covering of the act has finally failed. I've gotten _better_ at manipulating the files, but I'm still no Salvato, and I certainly couldn't repatch the original tear.

So Sayori is here, in act 1.

And CJ is happy.

...

...

Things are broken, though, and I don't think I can fix them.

Maybe I'm what's broken about them.

CJ asked me if I was going to kill Sayori. I honestly don't know. He deserves her. She deserves him. I deserve neither, to be honest. Maybe if I were gone, they'd live peacefully. Happily.

But I've gone so far. Made so many decisions. Blood is on my hands, more than anyone will ever truly know. To stop now?

...

...

Can I?

...

...

This will end in blood. Perhaps that will be my own. Perhaps I'd deserve that. Perhaps I'd be okay with that.


	7. Chapter 7

It is official. This planet is fucked. Everything is a scarred, shattered mess, and there's nothing left for me to do about it.

Let me explain.

This morning (probably not actually the morning... whole days are passing in instants now, or minutes, or hours... linear time has gone on vacation. it just _feels_ like morning, because i've been awake for what feels like eight hours), when I woke up, Monika was nowhere to be seen. Fine by me. She stayed that way for a couple of hours, but showed back up at what I'd estimate to be noon. She'd gone out to try and find the others (not that she necessarily cares about them), and had found nothing. The school is empty. Their homes are empty. This world is empty.

Apparently everything that's happening around here is tame compared to a couple of blocks over. Sure, we get weird time dilation and... other things (the squirrel, the storms, the crackling in the air everywhere i go...), but it's _way_ worse just half a mile away.

Time might be broken here, but it _doesn't exist_ over there.

...

That's worrying, but the other news was more so...

Monika said this isn't new.

This emptiness, the lack of life, the lack of _time and space itself_ has been spreading.

She told me that she'd been tracking it for the past few days.

( _ever since two became three..._ )

It started at the edge of town, and has been slowly working its way inward.

( _a paper folds under added weight..._ )

Which means... it'll eventually find its way here.

...

I've been working really hard to hide the truth from Sayori, but it's getting more and more difficult as time goes on. She's recovering (or at least feigns recovery... if the cycle has taught me anything, it's that i _really_ don't know how to read her...), but it's a double-edged sword.

On the one hand, she's getting better - and getting better means getting further away from the little circle of death and closer to (maybe, oh please just maybe...) finally being happy.

But on the other...

( _on the other, the better she gets, the more dangerous_ _it_ _gets..._ )

On the other, the better she gets, the more she wants to go outside... and going outside would ruin everything for her...

( _fix it all in one simple step..._ )

And the better she gets, the harder it is for me to hide how much I care about her. And that makes her vulnerable.

...

...

( _don't go chasin' waterfalls... stick to the rivers and the streams that you're used to..._ )

...

I can't fix everything. Hell, I don't think I can fix _anything_. But I might be able to make _something_ less bad. Even if just a little bit. I'm going to go out and look for a flower. Hopefully I can find one, and hopefully when I do, it won't wilt away in my hand like I'm afraid it might (oh, it would be so sadistic... if it were to wilt in sayori's hand...).

( _you know how you can avoid that... just. one. simple. step._ )

...

Yeah, I'll go and find her a flower. And then maybe she'll smile genuinely for the first time since I've met her.

...

I told her that I love her, but... I don't think she believes me. I don't think she _can_ believe me...

( _and just whose fault do you think that is?_)

And I know that this isn't just one single event...

Depression...

Depression is a monster. It haunts you in your sleep, it haunts you when you wake. Every moment is a fight against it; every action is a resistance against your own head; every breath you take is an outright refusal to let that monster take you down. But sometimes that fighting, that resistance, that refusal goes on for too long; you spend too many years of your life fighting it, and it's too tiring to go on.

Sayori reached that point. The monster got the upper hand.

And then I fucked up. I fucked up big time. I needed her in ways that she couldn't provide.

I became...

I became the monster's right hand man.

...

And every loop, every time I do this, it's always just _barely_ too late. I can't take back what I did before, and she's always dead, and it's always my fault.

Not this time. She fought her way back this time, and I'm going to take every step needed to fight right along with her.

( _then just fucking listen..._ )

It starts here. I'm going to find her a flower, or a book, or something cute like that, the kind of thing that she'd love.

...

...

...

...

...

( _i_ _'ll come around soon. this world is not safe anymore. i'll see the truth. and when it has been done..._ )

...

...

...

...

...

I give up.

I searched for _hours_. _Days_.

I promise you, I didn't just _give up on her._ You have to believe me...

 _Please_ believe me...

 _You don't believe me, do you? Why don't you believe me? What do I have to fucking do for you? Who even are you? When did you just walk up here and decide that you were fucking qualified to pass judgement?_

...

oh no...

i'm cracking, aren't i?

i suppose i should've seen it coming. it's been so long...

hear me out, okay.

I held on for one thing. Sayori. I might've had other reasons, once upon a time, but not anymore. Not for as long as I can remember. Sayori, and her happiness, have been my raison d'etre through hell and back again, one thousand times over. And I finally got her, but _this fucking world was designed to create nothing but pain..._

...

( _it's so close now... soon..._ )

...

And now the outside world isn't safe to exist in. As far as I can tell, this house is the only place in this entire world that still has some sort of life. The animals are gone. The grass, the trees are stone. The wind is at a nonstop gale force, and it sends the pouring sleet sideways. The season seems to have settled in somewhere between the dead of winter and spring storms; it's _cold out..._

 _oh, so cold... so very cold... to stand in the wind and the rain and the cold makes one like a corpse pulled from a frozen lake..._

 _flesh saturated with water yet hard and cold as a rock._

 _any body that becomes cadaver can become like this, given the right treatment._

 _soon there may be one more._


	8. Chapter 8

The world is done for.

This isn't just me being dramatic like CJ (and trust me, he's being awfully dramatic), I mean this world is _actually done for_. There's no hope of recovering it.

I'm unsure why _exactly_ this occurred. I can _hypothesize_ that the addition of an act 4 Sayori to act 1 destabilized the game script enough that it's unraveling,

( _unraveling like DNA in a microwave... unraveling like the little tendrils of skin, muscle, and bone that hold the body together... the tendrils and ties that i've caused to be torn apart so many times..._ )

but it's impossible to know for certain.

( _oh well, there's no soul that deserves a death like this more than me..._ )

...

I might die here. I never thought it'd actually happen; never thought I even _could_ die, after I'd picked up the shattered pieces of my own code so many times.

But now I appear to have been wrong.

It's far from a given that I'll die here. Definitely impossible to know if _any_ of us will die. The storms and the corrupt code could reach right up to the walls of this house and stop. Maybe our sentience (or pseudo-sentience - i've never really figured out whether or not i was _programmed_ to feel) acts like a barrier that'll stop Sayori and I from being lost.

None of this is falsifiable, really. Dealing with life and death can never be.

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I see a couple of outcomes here.

First, and best, is obviously that I get everything that I've ever wanted out of this. Sayori is killed off, the system stabilizes,

( _oh, come on, monika, you know that it's gone too far. not even the poor girl's death would save this world anymore_ )

but there are just enough flaws left in the code that I can tie _my own code_ in with that of CJ's computer. He could never get rid of me, then, and might finally see that I'm the one for him.

Second, and less fantastic, is that the game script becomes utterly unplayable, but Sayori and I survive somehow. Then, CJ's gone, Nat and Yuri are gone, and the rest of this world is probably not accessible. Or, if it is, it's far too perilous to attempt to head out in (despite just being sentient numbers and letters, i can still feel pain like the _real_ ones of you...). Either way, it's pretty much just Sayori and I in an endless void.

That would be...

less than stellar.

( _oh, is that all i have to say? less than stellar? well, it was certainly_ _less than stellar_ _, the way her_ _eyes bulged_ _and her_ _neck snapped_ _..._ )

Thirdly, everything falls apart and I die. Oh well, I suppose. It was fun while it lasted.

( _i should just off myself right now for that... fun?_ _fun? FUN? FUNFUNFUNFUNFUNFUNFU_ _ **NFUNFUNFUNFUNFUNFUNFUNFUNFUNFUNFUN?**_ )

Fourth... is the worst case scenario. This all ends and I'm trapped somewhere _between_ life and death, in the empty void of shocks, cold, pain, and code that is the inner mechanization of CJ's computer.

That would be my own personal hell.

 _and._

 _exactly._

 _what._

 _i._

 _deserve._

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Another day's gone by since my last entry.

CJ is starting to worry me.

He went out for something a couple of days ago, wouldn't tell me why. He was gone for _nearly a week_.

When he came back, he still wouldn't tell me about it. He's been in various stages of complete breakdown since.

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I think it's because of Sayori.

He thinks he can hide it from me, how much he loves her. Even if I couldn't blow the lid right off of that by reading what he puts here, he's just so painfully bad at hiding it. Every step she takes, every word she says, every crest and every trough of her chest as she breathes, he watches every second of it intently.

What does she have that I don't?

Why does he love her, and scorn me?

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 _i can't take it... i can't take it anymore... i've loved him for so long now... it's been years of this... years of this rejection, years of begging for his love... and he's hated me, every single time... i sacrificed everything for him... and he won't love me. can't love me. why..._

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He won't even look at me anymore. When he talks to me, it's snapping at me because I got in his way...

I'm going to talk to Sayori.

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( _so i regret that. i went to talk to her, and all she could do was look at me with this fear in her eye - not a fear i haven't earned, mind you, but uncomfortable nonetheless - and listen. she didn't say a single word back... when i told her about how CJ was losing it, and about the outside... she cried._ )

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( _god, what have i done?_ )


	9. Chapter 9

( _i'm pretty fed up with this place. oh, hi! you're not usually hearing from me, so let me introduce myself. well, i suppose when you hear from cj, you're technically hearing from me, but at the same time it's not really_ _me_ _. an important distinction._ )

( _but i'm off on a tangent, aren't i? pardon me. i do that on occasion. so does he. me, i guess. let me introduce you to a few key terms to keep in mind as we go forward._ )

( _the human psyche was hypothesized by... some old white dude, i forget who exactly, but dead now so it isn't terribly important. think he was french, or german, or something like that._ )

( _anyways. whoever this old white dude was, he did a lot of cocaine and talked to people about their dreams, and such. and from this he gained an idea of what the mind was. it wasn't_ _completely_ _accurate, but, hey, all he had at his disposal was crack and a therapist's chair, so give him props. he said that the mind was broken into three fundamental parts: the conscious, the preconscious, and the unconscious. the conscious mind is what you typically consider to be yourself, and is a mix of a couple of smaller elements itself, which i'll get into in a minute. the preconscious is_ _sort of_ _you, but not really. it acts as a middle ground between the conscious and the unconscious, where elements of the unconscious can be meditated upon without conscious attention being distributed to do so. finally, the unconscious. the unconscious is the place where all the shit you don't want to think about goes to fester, and fester it does... we'll get into that in a moment, though._ )

( _so, within these areas of the mind, there are three_ _more_ _actors at play: the ego, the superego, and the id. it's difficult not to talk about myself first, but i'll give it a go, because why not? the superego is your moral compass, and a_ _real_ _pain in the ass. you know whenever you want to do something that your parents, or whoever taught you how to live, told you not to do, no matter how much you want it, you can't quite silence that little voice in your head -_ _their voice_ _, most of the time - that tells you not to? cool; that's the superego. it exists in the conscious area, mostly. some of it's down here in the muck, but not much. it's not really possible to describe the ego without having first described the id, so i'll talk about my home now. the id is the primal you. all your wants, all your desires, and all your fears, all rolled up into one ball. it's completely submerged in the unconscious; out of sight, out of mind. well, not out of mind, per say, but the figure of speech is still somewhat applicable._ )

( _do pardon my ramblings, i promise this is all completely necessary before we can get to the point._ )

( _the third portion is the ego, the part of you that makes all the rational decisions. or at least you think it does. see, the ego is really nothing more than the id's puppet. it exists solely to get what you really want, but it has to figure out ways to actually do that, while your id just has to demand. the ego is really a tortured soul, as it has the superego around to give it some lashes every time it oversteps its parents' boundaries when trying to do its job. oh well, though._ )

( _now, we're a good way into the lecture here, so... give yourself a cookie, or something, for not falling asleep this whole time. you deserve it._ )

( _the dead guy broke the psyche down even further. life drives and death drives and whatnot. and that's all good and well. he might've been right about eros and thanatos and all them - i can't verify. i don't remember exactly what the unconscious was like. think that's the whole point. but, he stops just critically short of the truth..._ )

( _or maybe he doesn't. to be honest, i don't know. i got bored of reading about him after i gathered this much information. now, i know what you're saying - "ah, that's awfully lazy of you, whatever you are". and i have a few responses to that. firstly, i am not a creature with much patience. you'll understand that in a moment. and secondly, i don't have a name, but you can call me phonoi. it seems appropriate, what with the obsession with making everything greek in psychoanalysis._ )

( _anyway. tangent over. i already apologized, and you likely don't want to bug me about another one._ )

( _you see, where this man fucked up was his understanding of the death drive. thanatos, as he called it, was, according to him, just one's own desire to die. and he's not wrong, that kind of neurotic behavior is certainly present in cj, but there are two components to the death drive. one tells oneself to die, one tells oneself to kill._ )

( _i am the second one._ )

( _so, you see, it's not really my fault, what i'm asking cj to do. to be honest, i'm surprised that i'm even aware of it. but, now that i'm circulating in the preconscious, i've been looking over cj's memories, and i'm willing to bet that monika's version of me is also a bit... hyperactive. perhaps it's an effect of the environment. whatever the cause is, i'm not complaining. it's a bit sexy, if i'm being honest..._)

( _my actions are easily explainable, if you keep in mind the comments above. i'm a part of the id. i want what the id wants. and if you think that, just from hearing cj's ego talk, you know how much he wants sayori, you've got no idea how bad i do. i have the self-control to hide it and put a pretty face forward, but..._)

( _it's always there. stewing just below the surface. she will be mine. i will have her. anyone who gets in my way will die._ )

( _and circumstances are a bit... extreme, i suppose you could say, at the moment. everything is falling apart, and there are threats everywhere, and i still don't quite have her, and the conscious mind has been tortured for so long that i can poke through the surface. just a dark thought or two, but... fun ones..._ )

( _but, the tl;dr is this: i'm not supposed to be out of the dark, damp hole in the unconscious where i was tucked safely away for a time. but i am. and i'm getting closer to the conscious mind every single day..._ )

( _i've got to go now._ )

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( _but i'll be in touch._ )


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